


Eyes On The Horizon

by pesha



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:49:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pesha/pseuds/pesha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faramir is looking over the horizon for a visitor who will never come when his wife, Éowyn, comes to help him reach a turning point in his grieving process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eyes On The Horizon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eternal Scribe (Shadowcat)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcat/gifts).



Emyn Arnen flourished after the death of Sauron. Thanks to the elves of Mirkwood who had come to Ithilien at the welcome of Legolas and his dwarven companion Gimli, all of the Moon-land flourished. It was becoming the place that it had been before the darkness of Mordor had started to seep across its borders to infect its people until those people had finally left, abandoning the land to ruin and desolation.

 _Life_ was returning to Gondor again.

Faramir stared over the parapet of his home where he ruled, where he was both Steward -as Elessar, stubborn creature that he was, had refused to allow him to rescind the title- and Prince of Ithilien. He was a _prince_. 

A cool hand slipped around his waist, making its way under his vestments to touch the skin of his side, and Faramir looked down at his wife to smile. Her face was precious to him. There was a kindness in her, a joy for _life_ that healed him down into the marrow of his bones and reminded him that they had both found something beautiful in the Houses of Healing, something that transcended themselves as people and lifted them up as members of the race of Men. 

"You are staring out there again. Searching. Our lands are thriving. Our people are happy. What is it that you do not have that you feel the need to search for it so diligently, husband? Is it something I could give to you? Something I could help you find? I will go with you, you know. I would go with you even now, in this moment, down to the stables, saddle our horses, leave our home here and go searching if only you could tell me what it is that we need to find. Can you do that? Can you tell me what it is that you need so desperately that your eyes are ever on the horizon?" 

Éowyn would do that for him, too. Faramir was certain of it. She had taken up a sword and a shield, strapped on the armor of a man, declared herself 'Dernhelm', and ridden into battle as fiercely as any man. It had been she who had dealt the killing blow to the Witch-king of Angmar. There was no doubt in his mind that his wife would go out into battle with him in an instance if he asked it of her, but the battle that he wanted to fight was already lost, the war already over, and all the enemies were too late vanquished for any acts on their part to make a difference.

Tilting her head to the side, Éowyn asked again, "Do you know what you are searching for, husband? Do you know what it is that your heart yearns for yet cannot find?" 

He knew what he yearned for, what his heart _ached_ for in his chest. 

"I don't know that I can say the words to you," he confessed to her, his voice quiet enough that the wind nearly blew the words away, "I believe I have them. The words. My father always despised that I loved words. He hated that I read. Thought I should be out trying to best my brother in swordplay. Learn the bow with perfect accuracy. Become a better rider than everyone else. Do something he could understand that proved I was a son worth the loss of his wife." 

Everyone knew that Denethor blamed Faramir for Finduilas dying untimely at no more than thirty-eight years of age. She had been fading since her marriage to Denethor, yet Faramir's birth had been terrible for her. The strain from her second son's birth had been enough to nearly set her in her bed for the entirety of the five years that it took before the life inside her finally faded away. 

The loss of her light had left Gondor dark, had left Denethor a shadow of the man he had once been, but it had not changed Boromir.

For how little love that Denethor had for his younger son, Boromir had twice as much to cover that deficit. He had _loved_ his brother. They had teased one another, but he had _loved_ Faramir. He had brought him books from his travels, had taught him weaponry, riding, and all the skills that his father praised. It had been Boromir who had dressed him in his first suit of armor and Boromir who had held him while he'd wept over the growing pains that wracked his young body. 

His brother had loved him and Faramir hadn't even been able to say a proper goodbye to him. 

"I am looking for my brother when I look out there. It sounds simple to say that, doesn't it? That I might miss my brother after his death? You should understand that since you've a brother of your own that I know you often miss though he is but a ride away in Minas Tirith. You can miss your brother. I am sure that you can miss him as someone you love, but the love you have for your brother is not the love that I had, the love that I _still have_ for my own."

Faramir turned, sank to his knees on the stones of the parapet, letting the heavy walls of their home brace his back as he hugged his knees to his chest. There was no more strength in him to hold himself upright. All that he had was gone in that moment as he confessed to his wife that he yearned for a brother dead too soon.

He didn't expect Éowyn to settle herself at his side, but she did. His wife would ride into battle with him at a moment's notice. She would offer him her hand to hold when his own was too empty to bear and Éowyn would welcome him into her body when he couldn't be satisfied with only his own skin to live in. That didn't mean that Faramir expected her to settle at his side after he'd told her that she couldn't understand how he loved his lost brother.

"Tell me then. Tell me about how you love him. Tell me about your Boromir. I will sit here and I will listen and I will love him with you because I am your wife and I love you enough to love with you." 

Searching her face, he could find nothing other than pure sincerity in her words and he started talking without even realizing what he was saying, "He had the biggest hands. We weren't very far apart in height, but Boromir? His hands were massive. Simply _enormous_. I remember holding his hand as a boy and his would wrap all the way around mine, his fingers would go all the way around my entire hand until he was holding my wrist and there was such _strength_ in that. I felt so safe. I never felt safer than when he was holding my hand. He taught me to ride by holding the reins on my horse with one big hand and the other wrapped around the pommel of my saddle to ensure that we walked a straight line together. I remember the first day he let go. I was so afraid I would fall, but I saw him standing there, watching me, with those big hands settled onto hips and his shoulders back and he was so _proud_. I just couldn't let him down." 

Éowyn nodded, her eyes bright and her smile gentle as she encouraged him, "Go on. Tell me more." 

"I was---I was twelve when I first truly started to become a man. It was Boromir who laughed at me for being a fool over it. He told me the crudest jokes about women and kept on about tavern wenches until I started crying because I didn't want that. I couldn't imagine. I would never want that. I thought he'd be like our father. Laugh at me. Strike me. Tell me I'd never be man enough to be worthy of my name. He didn't though. He stopped talking and his face went still and he came to sit on my bed with me and he wiped my tears away with his hands as if I were still young. Boromir told me that one day I would meet a woman I would honor as my wife. He told me that I would want to touch her as if I honored her. To bring her pleasure. He told me about that, too, and I _could see it_. I could see a future with a woman I loved and I never imagined it would be you because you are so much _more_ than I deserve, yet I saw a life with that faceless woman who would be my wife and my brother held me and I watched his hands move through the air as he painted pictures for me about how lovemaking could be beautiful. If I am at all a good lover to you, it is because of him and if he were alive today, he would tell you the same thing. He'd likely even laugh at me and lean in to tell you that he would make you a better lover if only you'd met him first." 

"Well, if he said such a thing, I'd set him straight," she laughed, "I would not have any other man in my bed save you. You are everything I deserve and more. You are a man your brother would be proud of, Faramir. I am certain of that even without having met him." 

"He would be right though. He'd have made you a better lover. You love me so you say that he wouldn't have been, but I know differently. I'd not even blame you if you had chosen him over me. If I were a woman, I would have chosen Boromir."

"Would you? What if you were me then? What if you were Éowyn and I were Faramir? What would you have done if Boromir were alive and came riding over that horizon today to laugh with us, drink with us, and eat at our table?" 

Faramir hesitated as he tried to think of what he would have done in that situation. They would be married. He would love his husband since Éowyn clearly loved him. It would be easy to flirt with Boromir because he was handsome, charming, everything a woman would want. That he would be married would be negligible because he was married to his brother who also loved him. They had never failed to share everything before.

They'd shared a woman before.

Would he have shared his wife with his brother? 

Yes.

It wasn't even a question.

If he were _Éowyn_ though? What would he do? Would he have considered that? Welcoming another man into his bed?

"I'd have chosen both. If I were Éowyn and you were Faramir and Boromir had come for us both, I would have given him that. I would have given us all that. I would know that Faramir had---had shared a woman with his brother before. I would have known that because my husband loves me and shares his secrets with me and would have told me how he'd never imagined lovemaking could be beautiful until he'd seen his brother's massive hands moving over a woman's delicate body. I would have offered everyone more wine than they needed and I would have suggested that since Boromir was a guest in our home, perhaps he should sleep in the Prince's chambers. I would have asked you, Faramir, to help me show him the way and I would have, I would have swung my hips the way that you do when you really want to prove a point to me. I would have hypnotized both of those men and taken them into my bed and I would have been happy for it. That's what I would have done if I were Éowyn, you were Faramir, and our brother Boromir were still a shining star in our lives." 

She seemed to barely be breathing, her face flushed, and Faramir worried he'd gone too far, said too much, offended her beyond measure. He braced himself for a strike that turned out to be his wife throwing herself into his arms as she kissed him as desperately as she'd ever kissed him before. Faramir couldn't breathe though Éowyn kept pressing the air from her lungs right into his own through his mouth and his back ached from being pressed into the stone of the parapet and he hoped that no one came patrolling to catch him pawing at his wife as if they were stealing the moment together rather than exercising their due marital rights to one another. 

"I---"

Éowyn pressed her fingers to his lips to hush him as she moved to stand, "No. Don't say anything else. We're going to our rooms and you're going to tell me more. You're going to tell me anything. Everything. All that you want to say because today? I'm going over the horizon with you, husband. We're finding your Boromir in our love together. We're going to love him together and you will find your peace in me. I swear it to you. Now, come along and while you do, think of what else you want to say because tonight your brother has just arrived at our gates, I've just given us all too much wine, and you get to watch my hips as I lead the way for both sons of Denethor to come to my bedchamber to take me as their wife." 

Some journeys were meant to be made in a group, with a Fellowship, and others were meant to be undertaken alone. Éowyn's hand in his wasn't nearly as encompassing as Boromir's had been, yet Faramir felt that he had reached a turning point in his own journey as a result of her lead all the same and he had never been more glad that he no longer had to take any journeys alone since he had Éowyn as a wife to stand at his side to walk along with him every step of the way.


End file.
